One of the more charming of Ernst Lubitsch's romances, The Shop around the Corner has been a
favorite for generations. Its perfect 'meeting cute' tale of romantic fluff generates a positive
feeling about people, and a warm optimism for life in general. James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan make
a likely
pair, with Stewart finally showing some promise as an actor, to boot. A prime example of 'the
Lubitsch touch', the show's screenplay is often quoted as an example of perfect three-act story structure.

Synopsis:

The Budapest department store run by Hugo Matuschek (Frank Morgan) is a happy little
society of salesclerks, where assistant manager Alfred Kralik (James Stewart) and salesgirl
Klara Novak (Margaret Sullavan) don't at all see eye to eye. But in secret pen-pal letters they're
madly in love with one another, each hardly guessing who their mysterious secret admirer might be.

Screenwriting genius Billy Wilder must have looked upon The Shop around the Corner as movie
perfection; he often returned to Lubitsch territory in his screenplays, searching for setups as
perfect as this one. Like other writers for Lubitsch, Wilder also adapted European stage farces
as the basis for Hollywood movies. He never
compared himself to his idol Lubitsch, even though he studiously copied many of his trademarks - like
using at least one romantic gypsy song per picture (in this case, Ochichornya. 2

Samson Raphaelson's central conceit (two secret pen-pal lovers don't realize they already know one
another) was the kind of effortless movie magic that Wilder admired and turned into a career-long
theme - a situation that creates emotional involvement and romantic suspense from within the
characters. Raphaelson (and Wilder) were already experts at the 'meeting cute' gag: a clever way to
get two
lovers together for the first time. The classic example is from Bluebeard's Eighth Wife: A man
and a woman are both in the men's pajama department. He sleeps only in bottoms, and she only in
tops, so
they buy one pair of pajamas together and split it. Almost all of Wilder's films contain an element
of disguise or mistaken identity (or identities) as their main plot engine. Even his non-romances
reference the meet-cute dynamics: In Sunset Boulevard William Holden pitches Nancy Olsen
the script idea of teachers who share the same classroom (day school/night school) and fall in
love without ever meeting.

Besides a clever concept, The Shop around the Corner goes one better by creating a world
around the lovers that we really enjoy sharing. The picture created is almost a valentine to an
Utopian Europe that, in 1940, Lubitsch might have feared was disappearing forever. Budapest is
peaceful and prosperous, and there's harmony among the relatively humble employees of Matuschek's,
even with disagreements and misunderstandings. The other clerks, especially
Joseph Schildkraut, are beautifully drawn characters, and even the boss is a charmer. Rather than
casting the supporting players as hicks or silly eccentrics, as in a typical
Frank Capra, Lubitsch generates sympathy for each and every one of them as deserving of our
full respect. All of them have personal dreams equally as valid as those of the star leads.

For instance, in the movie there's a nervy, somewhat obnoxious errand boy played by William Tracy.
Instead of becoming a baddie, he becomes a hero, saving the day at one point. He turns out to
be a real take-charge guy in a pinch - still nervy, exploiting the opportunity to the hilt, but a
great guy just the same.

Shot with the seamless gloss of the top MGM product of the time, The Shop around the Corner
isn't the kind of movie where you remember any particular visual patterns or cutting style. We're
focus instead on its central relationships. People who love this film are swept up with
anticipation of how the romance will unfold; we spend much of the running time knowing things the
characters don't, eager for them to find out. With a sweet good humor, the picture
doesn't disappoint. It's the kind of confection that appeals directly to the heart.

Taking place around Christmas time, The Shop around the Corner is a great holiday movie.
For all the talk about income and selling, the overall tone of the film isn't about money - for
Americans at least, all the denominations and names of the Hungarian currency mean nothing! The
quaintness and formality of the little store probably demanded that the story be set in Europe: if
it were set here, we'd be expecting a labor-management theme to run through it.

It's interesting that when Billy Wilder's best comedies and bittersweet romances tried to place the
same kind of emotional never-neverland Lubitsch situations in a more realistic world, critics often
gave them a hard time.
The Apartment made Matuschek's department
store
into a faceless corporate insurance company, combining the whimsy of The Shop around the Corner
with the social bleakness of The Crowd. When the lovers there finally sift through the
romantic deceptions, they have to deal with an attempted suicide and unemployment just as Stewart and
Sullavan do here, but on a different level. 1

Warner/Turner's DVD of The Shop around the Corner is in perfect shape. The b&w image is
crystal clear, and the sound is equally rich. Not to take anything away from TCM, the cable
channel where most of us have seen this gem, but after the satellite transmission and the
compression take their toll, TCM's signal doesn't look all that hot on a bigscreen television. I
think I'd pay to subscribe if some HD TCM channel came into being.

The extras are brief and not as advertised on the box. A 1930s MGM short subject called A New
Romance of Celluloid, The Miracle of Sound tells of the technical
development of sound films, but mostly wants us to know, in MGM's self-important way, just how
wonderful the studio is and how we should all say our prayers for it at night like good children. A
text file relates the various remakes and the stage play version of the film. A nifty trailer
appears for Shop in which Lubitsch himself makes a short appearance, but I couldn't find
trailers for the other two remakes, even though they're listed on the back cover. Not that
I wanted to see anything having to do with You've Got Mail - it was a terrible picture that
somehow managed to make both Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan totally unlikeable and undeserving of favor.
No Lubitsch Touch, there.

1.Truffaut's Stolen Kisses has to do with detectives and a
shoe store, and has a tone that also reminds me of The Shop around the Corner. Return

2.I guess the Wilder/Lubitsch pictures I'm talking about, to degrees lesser or
greater, are The Major and the Minor, A Foreign Affair, Sabrina, Love in the Afternoon,
The Apartment, Irma la Douce, Kiss me, Stupid, and Avanti!Return